1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for providing an adaptive interface for use in interrogating an application. In particular, the present invention provides a method and a system for providing a Query/Response interface for querying information of a targeted application with a formatted query representative data.
2. Description of Related Art
It can be a very difficult process to build any interface from one application to another, even for those who have been doing so for many years. In particular building a Query/Response interface is all the more complex given the nature of the interface. In integration engineering, it is desirable to remove the barriers to interfacing and make intersystem connectivity a process that is easy to implement for anyone.
When building most interfaces (commonly called “store and forward”), the software engineer is faced with the complex task of formatting information into a specific structure, and then, at the right times (events) sending the data to another application for processing. The engineer faces the likewise difficult task of receiving similar information, decoding it, and determining how to process the data received. At the same time, all of this has to happen behind the scenes, without user intervention.
When building a query/response interface, the problems of the store and forward interface become commonplace. A store and forward interface has a specific list of events to handle. In query/response interfacing, an application user causes the event to occur by requesting that their application query another for information. At the same time, the user can change the parameters of the request by modifying the search criteria, the sort criteria, data selection criteria, and so on. The query/response mechanism has to know how to handle this situation and respond appropriately. At the same time, the query is coded, sent, and the corresponding response received and decoded all while the user is waiting—in other words, it has to happen very quickly.
To make matters worse, there are applications that cannot handle a query/response interface. These applications don't provide a query/response capability in their workflow and they often don't even provide the ability to interface data.
A working query/response interface is obtained on some existing systems though intensive work with an electronic data exchange product as well as work performed by consultants. These efforts, however, have been extensive and costly.
It therefore is desirable to provide a method and system which avoids the aforementioned drawbacks.